On Werdum’s submission of Nogueira: “I was really
impressed by [Werdum’s] movement and his transitions and some of
the things he was doing as far as blocking Nogueira from circling
after him. He looked great. Werdum definitely looked like the real
deal on the ground, but it just seems like Nogueira’s kind of
stayed the same. It just looked like two different caliber of guys
on the ground.”

On whether technique declines with age: “No, I
think your technique actually gets better … . It seems to me like
Nogueira for a while there was quite ahead of all the heavyweights.
He was playing a pretty basic game and he was kind of getting away
with it until he ran into Fedor [Emelianenko]. The guys he was
fighting weren’t great submission guys. The two submission guys
that he fought, he got tapped, which is a little bit odd to
me.”

On Nogueira’s strategy: “I cannot stand deep half
guard for MMA. It’s a sport move. It’s a sport jiu-jitsu move which
I cannot stand. I’ll never do it in a fight. If you’re going to do
it, you’ve got to kind of get in and get out. If you don’t get the
guy over, you’ve got to kind of let go of the leg and come back to
square one. [Nogueira] tends to hang on to it and fight for it, and
Werdum was just doing all the right things to neutralize it. You
can tell Werdum definitely was drilling the defense of that, but
Nogueira just had no plan B. He wasn’t working on putting the feet
on the hips and pushing him off and getting up to his feet or using
the wall to get up to his feet. He just basically got outhustled on
the ground, which to me, that has nothing to do with age as much as
who is really pushing Nogueira and who’s really tapping Nogueira in
the room? That’s my question.”

On Nogueira’s skill at this point in his career:
“Werdum was bigger and he seemed to have much better technique as
well. It was kind of a double whammy for [Nogueira]. I’m a huge
Nogueira fan and I don’t want to make this sound disrespectful, but
it kind of makes me question where his level is because the two
submission guys that he’s fought tapped him. It wasn’t that they
controlled him. It’s that they both tapped him.”

On why Nogueira tapped when he did: “I think
Werdum just had really good control on [the arm]. I think
[Nogueira] got stuck in that belly-down position and it’s kind of
hard because if Nogueira would have jumped over Werdum’s head with
his legs, he would have ended up flat on his back. I kind of think
he was trying to bide his time and maybe work his way out, but
little by little, Werdum kind of muscled the arm out. When you get
caught in an arm lock, sometimes guys don’t move and don’t resist
because they’re afraid if they move, it’s going to get deeper. If
he tries to move, he would have gotten rolled over and ended up in
a worse spot. That’s what it kind of seemed like to me because I
was like, ‘Yeah, step over,’ but so many times when you step over,
you end getting rolled over to your back. That could have been part
of the problem as well. I think he just got caught and didn’t want
to move to make things worse, and by not moving, things got
worse.”

On whether Nogueira should retire: “You have
nothing else to prove. He’s considered one of the greatest
heavyweights of all time. He’s a former world champion. He’s made a
lot of money. He’s got a ton of guys that love him, that will keep
representing his brand, which is that Minotauro brand and the
Minotauro gym. … He’s a guy that’s taken a tremendous amount of
damage in his career. He’s had a very long career. He’s had a long
career at the highest level. … He could only go down is what I’m
saying. All you’re doing is continuing to do damage to your body,
and it’s not even in the fights. You’ve got to remember what does
damage to your body is the camp leading up to the fight. … He
doesn’t need to do it. He’s got to really look at his career and
think about it.”